it's not so black and white. it's not like you should never use anyone else's api ever for your for profit stuff; it's simply a question of risk versus benefit

it's not so black and white. it's not like you should never use anyone else's api ever for your for profit stuff; it's simply a question of risk versus benefit. in the case of apis, the risk is that there is some probability that the api will go down. the benefit is that you don't have to write your own stuff, and in some cases, the benefit is the entire value proposition of your application. for example, should you use the google translate api? there is some probability that the api will go down. whatever you estimate this probability to be, that's how you have to weigh your benefit. you probably can't recreate google translate, so the benefit is whatever benefit your application provides, or the marginal benefit that google translate provides to your application. also, consider the fact that all apis will go down, but you can always create value in the interim. no api is going to be around forever, but will html even be around forever? how long is your application going to be useful? maybe the chance that the api will go down in the medium term is low, so that's an acceptable lifetime for your application.